The Psychopath Show

Arielle Baskin-Sommers is an assistant professor of Psychology at Yale University

Chion Wolf

Ted Bundy is a famous American psychopath.

Credit Wikimedia Commons

You know lots of sociopaths right?

It could be anyone from your ex-spouse to the guy who cut you off on your drive to work today. It's a term we throw around loosely to refer to anyone whoever lied to us or didn't follow the rules.

But, if we use it that way, it's not a very useful term. A sociopath is not the same thing as a jerk. In fact, the person you know who strikes you as a jerk is probably not a sociopath because it's not in the best interests of sociopaths to let you know what kind of people they are and sociopaths are usually pretty good about acting in their own best interests.

So, what does this term mean?

Today, you'll meet a writer and self-proclaimed sociopath and a researcher who studies the mechanisms behind psychopathic behavior.

Leave your comments below, email us at colin@wnpr.org, or tweet us @wnprcolin.

Allison Ehrenreich produced today's show.

GUESTS:

Arielle Baskin-Sommers is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale, interested in the ways in which psychopaths can be trained to process emotion better

M.E. Thomas wrote the book Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Hiding in Plain Sight and runs the popular blog sociopathworld.com